Ananya in Tech

If some had told me in my first year of university that I would be writing this post, I wouldn't have believed.  Today, I finally achieved a dream I have held onto for years: I’ve officially cracked Google Summer of Code 2026! with OWASP Foundation under OWASP BLT✨ It might seem like just another program to some, but for me, this is a dream coming true-a journey of collecting broken pieces, holding them together, and building something completely new.  🍂 The Beginning Coming from a computer science background in high school to an unexpected core engineering major in university was a drastic shift. My first year was spent just trying to heal my lost confidence and survive the transition. I heard about GSoC back then, but since I wasn't involved in the tech community, it felt like a distant, impossible mountain.  The real struggle hit in my second year. The syllabus was exhausting. By the time my second year rolled around, I started peeking outside my core curriculum. I he...

Journey of learning, coding, and debugging for the open-source community The Decision For me, Google Summer of Code is not just another task on a to-do list—it is a dream I have held since I first stepped into college. GSoC was actually the first programming program I ever heard about, and I was immediately fascinated by the concept. The idea that a student could contribute to massive, real-world codebases without actually being hired by the company felt like magic. It was a feeling of pure excitement.  My journey began with curiosity. During my first year, I started exploring the world of open source and GSoC. While my initial understanding was limited, it sparked a genuine desire to learn. I spent that year mastering the fundamentals of programming, leaning C, and practicing python, feeling a sense of accomplishment with every new concept I grasped. I was genuinely happy to simply be coding, and as time passed, my excitement for software development only grew.  However, the ...